Religion & Beliefs
When it Comes to the Environment, Enough is Enough
By Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin / April 21, 2008
I go to my closet every morning, push around a lot of hangers and choose what to wear. If a favorite pair of pants is in the wash, no matter: I have another. If this black sweater doesn’t match my pants, or the occasion, or the weather, or my mood, no matter: I have another. Yet I don’t think of myself as having too much. Good people (the kind I imagine myself to be) don’t have too much. We don’t eat too much or drink too much or spend too much or own too much or use too much. But there it is: A closetful of plenty. I know I am not alone. America is bursting with too-muchness. So much so that we have to build special buildings just to hold the too-much stuff that won’t fit into our increasingly too-big homes. So I am left to wonder: How did my closet get this way? If I have a lot now, then a while ago, along the road from Some to Plenty, I must have had Just Enough. When was that? Why didn’t I notice? Why didn’t I stop? Every time we turn on the TV, surf the web, or read a magazine, the challenge stares us in the face: How much more do we need? In light of this assault, it is hard to know how to measure enough. It sounds like it could be a third grade word problem: If I have Plenty of clothes in my closet, how many would I have to give away to get back to Enough? Yet, the solution lies not in numbers, but in the spirit. It demands that I reconnect with the notion of “full,” and that I cultivate a modest but satisfying measure of Fullness. If we could turn down our appetite thermostats—if we could become fuller sooner—we would have a head-start on solving environmental degradation. Imagine how much less damaging our lifelong footprints would be if our E-quotient, “Enough quotient,” was modestly set, and if we always stopped when it was full? It's true that fixing the environment requires energetic research and development to bring us new technologies at an affordable price. But is also requires a renewed awareness of the blessings of sova, satisfaction, satedness, Enoughness (a word that Alice Trillin used). If we "needed" less stuff, if we wanted less stuff, there would be more resources to share and more goods to go around, which would buy more time to discover technological fixes. Most of all, people would be happier, for we are driven to accumulate too much by a persistent, marketplace-cultivated sense of dissatisfaction in what we still don’t have, and thus what we have not yet become.
The path to Enoughness is satisfaction and pleasure in what we already possess, and who we are. In such a spiritual state, everyone—including the natural world—would win.
Related: 10 Books on the Intersection of Judaism and the Environment
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Did I read back there that: "The US has the balance pretty well right. Most of humanity would like to live in the US if it could. There are good reasons for that."? Did I also read somewhere else that if everyone had the same level of consumption as the US, even now, we would need five planets and counting to live on?
And there I was thinking that this article was about the environment. Silly me and evidently not. It seems that the consensus is for the world and the US in particular to slither back up the pole of unregulated capitalism as it was; the system that righteously declared itself the victor over communism at the close of the cold war. Think again, the Asian menace abounds.
I would like to think that the author’s question was more about consumption and, to understand that, we need to search for a deeper understanding and realise capitalism’s faults and add other ingredients into the mix -Â environmentalism.
But, when you look at what is conspicuously environmentally damaging, it is us. Exhalations of breath and other gaseous emissions by the nearly seven billion people on Earth, their pets and livestock alone are responsible for 23% of all greenhouse gas emissions. So, wouldn’t attempts to arrest climate change would be counter-productive? Just ask citizens of the US; they always seem to have the balance just about right.
Ecofasa turns waste to biodiesel using bacteria
A group of Spanish developers working for a company called Ecofasa just announced a new biofuel made up from trash. This isn’t a biodiesel made from used frying oil; instead, it’s made from general urban waste which is treated by bacteria. The result of that bacteria? Fatty acids that can be used to produce standard biodiesel. According to the company’s CEO, the process is fully biologic, competes with no feedstock and is really sustainable. However, the process doesn’t yield that much actual fuel: just one liter of biodiesel from 10 kg of trash. The project is now in a development phase, but Ecofasa said that a commercially viable model could be ready in three to four years.
http://www.biodieselmagazine.com/article.jsp?article_id=3225
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Jh4c24qeX4
Rabbi Cardin
you sound exactly like my Rabbi, which is why I have to disagree with you!
There's a point to be made that we should avoid placing too much of an emphasis on material possessions because they distract us from more important things in life, or because we should save our money for the future – but those reasons are about making wise personal choices, not living an good life.
If resources really were scarce, the idea that westerners are hogging all the stuff would make sense – but that's not the case.
As it is, the best thing we can do for the worlds poor is to buy the things they make – so they will have the income to buy the things they need.
And as for the natural world – most of the destruction we do seems to be in getting to places we need to go (like work and school, and to visit loved ones), heating our houses, and eating. You can ask people to cut corners with these necessities – walk to the store, turn down the thermostat, and eat less imported food – but do you really think buying fewer pants is going to help?
I respect where you're coming from – in that obsessive materialism is indeed a character flaw – but if you want to make a change in the world (rather then just in the hearts of your readers) a little economics would do you good.
Great concept. Simple weddings, at the local synagogue. A used gown bought on the internet. Home schooling. Shabbos dinner at my house next week, "bring something", such as a bag of apples, a red cabbage, sorbet for dessert, grapes, raisins, or nuts. Ask the elderly hippies around you. They know how to live simply. They own only washable, black, clothes and everything goes with everything.
It's good not to have too much stuff. You are right. It's good to pare down and be choosy. We are going to learn how to cook; that saves a ton of money. We are going to take our lunches to work. But afford a child? No. We are leaving that to the really poor. They like that kind of thing. Do you have kids, Rabbi?
The capitalist system does indeed do the best job. Not perfect, just better than socialism. Command economies don't work. Social justice is about letting the common man participate in capitalism. Socialism and command economies are feudal and unproductive. No honesty, just "who's your cousin". Laziness and exploitation result. People without the right cousins become the underclass. Voting democracy, rule of law, and MODIFIED free markets – those are the conditions that work. Modified – meaning, help those in need, but not full-blown socialism. The US has the balance pretty well right. Most of humanity would like to live in the US if it could. There are good reasons for that. It's not crankiness, restlessness, or unpleasant inlaws that make people emigrate from where they have always been, abandoning the graves of their ancestors.
Buying a lot and concentrating it in the hands of a few doesn't seem to
be alleviating the problem of poverty either. This is a
multi-dimensional issue which needs a multi-dimensional solution:
First, less stuff in my closet doesn't mean less stuff
everywhere. It means less stuff in *my* closet and ideally more stuff
to go around elsewhere without unsustainably raiding the world's
resources. Second, it also means re-evaluating an economy that can only
be said to be healthy if it is forever using and selling and therefore
trashing more stuff. Third, what if people made money more from
relationship jobs than making and selling stuff. Jobs like helping each
other in times of need, teaching, nursing, driving for one another,
tending to others' children, to others' aging parents, shopping for
each other, cooking for each other, etc. instead of making things we
don't need and selling them to strangers. What if we took the money we
don't spend on tchotchkes and too-many dresses and ties and wrapping paper
(thereby saving billions of dollars annually) and instead spent it on
repairing bridges and roads and schools and hospitals What if we were
more a society of services than goods? The workers would earn a living
wage and society would be better off. Fourth, all these issues need to
be viewed through a social justice lens. We cannot save the world while
impoverishing and starving others. But that doesn't mean conducting
business as usual, which is managing quite well to neither save the
world nor spare billions from poverty and hunger.
"If we "needed" less stuff, if we wanted less stuff, there would be more
resources to share and more goods to go around, which would buy more
time to discover technological fixes."
That's right – the way to solve poverty is by buying less. Ask the workers who depend on your (and all of our) "excessive" consumption for their daily bread if they agree? Â
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